Clark Coolidge, the poet perhaps most responsible for inspiring the entire experimental field of Language Poetry, produced 17 remarkable one-hour programs of experimental audio pieces by himself and others in 1969 for KPFA. This is the first program, comprising two Coolidge works read in his own voice. The first piece is built on various combinations of the repeated words "once, harp, rice" and the second is a medley of "but, if, it, though, its, thus, is, what, and." The rhythmic interplay and unexpected juxtapositions of these looped sounds create a hypnotic patterning, magnified in part by the writer's flat affect that serves to focus attention on the strangeness of the sounds of these quotidian syllables.


This audio is part of the collection: Other Minds Audio Archive
It also belongs to collections: Music & Arts; stream_only

Date: 1969-01-09
Keywords: Clark Coolidge; Words Program; KPFA-FM; Sound Poetry; Spoken Word

Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

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